


Only Skin-Deep

by LokoteiBex



Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon), Tangled (2010)
Genre: Abandonment, Drabble, Even something played for jokes can be turned into angst, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Self-Esteem Issues, Shipping only mentioned in passing, Very handsome very sad pretty boy, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-23 18:44:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21086054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LokoteiBex/pseuds/LokoteiBex
Summary: It's not that looks are only skin-deep (I mean, they are, but that's not the point). It's thinking his own looks are only skin-deep.





	Only Skin-Deep

**Author's Note:**

> If you’re dissatisfied with Eugene’s greatest fear in “Be Very Afraid” (Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, Season 3 Episode 9) please give this a read. It’s based on a headcanon I came up with years ago, well before the series was even announced.

_Only the cute kids get adopted._

_Wow. It’s a good thing you’re pretty, because you’re never going to amount to anything._

_Good looks aren’t a skill, but at least you’ve got them, you good-for-nothing._

_If nothing else, you’re easy on the eyes._

In all his twenty-five years, Eugene never felt as loved as he did when Rapunzel looked past his handsome face and into his heart and declared him wonderful. Or when she trusted him with a task that had nothing to do with his extreme beauty (and let’s face it, most of the things she tasked him with had nothing to do with his dashing good looks, despite the fact that he could twist just about anything to be about them).

Being a cute kid had never gotten him adopted.

Being a “pretty boy” had served him well, often as a means to keep his face from getting pummelled.

And until he met Rapunzel, he’d been a good-for-nothing thief. But he _had _been easy on the eyes.

History had been right.

And that fact that he’d been told, almost every day of his young life, that his looks were all he had going for him had affected him in ways that not even he fully realized. He’d become obsessed with his looks, with the way his hair fell, with people drawing his nose correctly. On the surface, it looked like conceit, plain and simple. But deep down underneath, it was a marker of his self worth.

_If I’m not the most handsome, if my nails aren’t immaculate and my skin not perfect, then I’m nothing at all. I’m not worth Rapunzel’s or anyone’s time_.

On some level, he knew that it wasn’t true, that Rapunzel loved him no matter what, and that people legitimately weren’t judging him as hard as he was judging himself. But the logical parts of your brain don’t always correspond clearly with the emotional parts. Especially the emotional parts that were formulated in your early childhood. And so he sought that validation from others in easy, breezy ways. He’d remark on how devilishly handsome he was, and when people smiled or at least didn’t disagree, he knew he was still safe for the time being.

No, being as attractive as he was wasn’t everything, but it was everything to him because without it, who was he? Nothing. No one. A poor orphan, abandoned as a baby.

_Maybe if I’d been just a little cuter, Edmund would have kept me_…


End file.
